Month: August 2009

For this Weekend Assignment, I ventured to a website I had successfully avoided for years. In order to fulfill Karen‘s instructions, I had to enter the wild world of I Can Haz Cheezburger.

Weekend Assignment: #281: Create a LOLcat (or a LOLdog, or a LOLpig, a LOLhorse or whatever). If you can do it with your own pet photo, great, but alternatively you can just describe what it would look like. Don’t forget the humorous caption!

Extra Credit: Do you like “lolspeak” and other Internet slang, or mostly find it annoying?

OK, I short-cutted this a bit by using pictures of Gypsy that I already have, rather than staging any new ones. One was taken on a vacation at my in-laws’ cabin, and the other is an example of the indignity we subject her to every Christmas.

One major reason I’ve stayed away from sites like Cheezburger
is because I am NOT a fan of “lolspeak” – I think this assignment is one of the few times I’ve actually used it. I’ll admit to being guilty of emoticon abuse; I generally stay away from them in my posts, but in comments, e-mails, and Twitter tweets from me, they show up all the time. In some respects, it’s just my preference – I think 🙂 and LOL basically say the same thing, but I like 🙂 better. I think the emoticons actually can be useful in helping to convey a tone of voice that sometimes isn’t as clear in casual writing, but I rarely use textspeak abbreviations like LOL (although BRB is useful at times). One thing that’s pleased me for years is that my son, who’s been online since middle school, rarely uses textspeak either, even though he texts a lot. He’s just a ridiculously fast phone typist.

“Lolspeak” is problematic for me, though. It’s amusing in small doses, but it seems to be making its way into the mainstream, largely by adults who really should know better. I think they actually do know better, and they’re just having fun or trying to keep up with “those kids today.” But given the state of education these days, I’m a little worried that the kids may not know better, and that if this language does become generally accepted, they won’t know better. Also, I have an old-fashioned fondness for proper spelling and grammar, and the writing that appeals to me usually makes use of both.

I may be trying to find high-minded justifications to support my feelings about it, and I probably do sound like a stick-in-the-mud here, but part of me really is a little nervous that the lol-ers are taking over. Having said that, though, this was a fun little change of pace. However, it will most likely be Gypsy’s only appearance as a LOLdog.

For those of you who might like to LOL along this time, Karen has included the rulz rules for the Weekend Assignment:

Please post your entry no later than Friday, September 4th at 6 PM. (You can also post your response in the comments thread, but a blog entry is better. )

Please mention the Weekend Assignment in your blog post, and include a link back to this entry.

Please come back here after you’ve posted, and leave a link to your entry in the comments below.

Visiting other participants’ entries is strongly encouraged!

I’m always looking for topic ideas. Please email me at mavarin2 AT gmail.com if there’s a Weekend Assignment theme you’d like to see. If I use your idea, you will be credited as that week’s “guest professor.”

Picture your critter and join the fun!

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

UPDATED 3/1/10: I am not an especially fast reader, and I have a family, a full-time job, and other responsibilities unrelated to book blogging. In order to fulfill the review obligations I already have pending, I will only accept a limited number of new review offers – please read on to find out more about the sort of books I’ll consider accepting. Thank you for your understanding. My goal is to post book reviews here […]

New Arrivals in my Google Reader Galleysmith Bookalicio.us Dispatches from across the blogiverse Regardless of their beliefs, nearly everyone believes in this Eyewitness News – sting-op at the Shell! (Do they still say “film at eleven”?); encounters with the gender police Tools for the team parent (or any group leader, really), from a genuine soccer mom; the joy of back-to-school week A night at home alone feels…weird Dating isn’t always good preparation for marriage, but […]

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report By the Numbers: Book reviews posted in 2009 so far: 28 Books read for the RYOB 2009 Challenge: 12 (goal is 20) Books received for review in 2009, to date: 30 Books acquired in 2009, to date, from all sources: 97 (!) (Evidently, receiving review copies of books is not having the slightest detrimental effect on my book-purchasing habits!) Books in the LibraryThing “To Read” collection: 229 (That number is […]

This Weekly Geeks assignment definitely hit close to home. Ruth asked: I think just about every reader has a least one book that they’ve been meaning to read for awhile (months or even years) but, for one reason or another, they just haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe it’s a book a friend recommended last year, or a title you’ve flirted with in a bookstore on more than one occasion, or maybe it’s a book […]

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted something that came via e-mail, so here’s one that came in from my mother-in-law yesterday. I don’t think it’s new – I think I’ve seen some of these floating around before – but the humor generated by careless grammar and punctuation never gets old. Always remember that spell-check is no substitute for good old-fashioned proofreading! (The commentary came with the e-mail. I’ve written nothing for this post except for […]

In this Assignment, Karen has asked what lures us to watch what’s onscreen – the people we see there, or the ones behind the scenes. Weekend Assignment: #281: Who has a greater impact on your decision to go to a movie or watch a tv show, the actors you see on the screen, or the behind the scenes writers, producers and/or directors? Extra Credit: Who is your favorite actor? I’ve said it before, and here’s […]

Following up the “15 Books That Will Always Stick With You” meme (I posted mine in a TBIF/Booking Through Thursday response in June), it’s time to go to the movies! The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you’ve seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Both my husband and my sister tagged me for this on Facebook, but they […]

Random self-promotional updates I mentioned this in yesterday’s TBIF post too; I’m part of the team that’s helping out behind the scenes with preparations for Book Blogger Appreciation Week*, and the next couple of weeks are going to be in high gear for that. If I go missing for a bit over here between now and early September, it’s BBAW’s fault. I know; I always say things like that and then I don’t disappear after […]

BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report Book reviews posted: Admission, by Jean Hanff Korelitz Currently reading/Upcoming reviews: The Weight of Silence: A Novel, by Heather Gudenkauf (for TLC Book Tours, scheduled for September 1) Teaser: “Petra was explaining to Fielda and me how their first grade classroom conducted experiments on how far those little plastic sports cars, Hot Wheels, I think they are called, could travel, when we came across the Clark family huddled in a […]

This is the first book I read on my Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and counts for the Read Your Own Books (RYOB) 2009 Challenge.AdmissionJean Hanff Korelitz book data via LibraryThing:Grand Central Publishing (2009), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 464 pagesISBN: 0446540706 / 9780446540704 Kindle edition data via Amazon.com:File Size: 750 KBASIN: B0026772YM First sentence: “The flight from Newark to Hartford took no more than fifty-eight minutes, but she still managed to get her heart broken three […]

(Part One of my commentary on this subject posted here yesterday.) As I’ve mentioned before, I take up space among both mom bloggers and book bloggers, but I learned about this through my mom-blogging connections. And while Blog with Integrity was founded to address issues arising in the mom-blog community, that’s not the only segment of the blogiverse that gets involved in marketing relationships and product reviews – or the only one who may find […]

The mainstream media has picked up on the debate that’s been going on in the blogiverse for quite a while now – the one concerning disclosure, ethics and the interplay between blogging and marketing. As CNN.com states in a recent story titled ‘Mommy bloggers’ vow to avoid ethical conflicts: “(M)oms who detail every moment of their domestic lives online produce some of the Web’s most well-read blogs. Many of these ‘mommy bloggers’ even draw the […]

This week, Karen has called for volunteers to discuss volunteering: Weekend Assignment #280: Have you ever been actively involved in a campaign or a cause, to the point of doing more than just donating or voting? Tell us about the phone calls, the food drive, the charity walk or other civic-minded work you’ve done, if any. And if you’ve never done this sort of thing, why not? (It’s okay if you haven’t – I’m just […]

Reading, ‘riting, and time…and music – that’s what I was talking about on other blogs this week. If you didn’t stop in and visit, I hope you’ll get the chance to go this weekend! New Arrivals in my Google Reader Well-Mannered Frivolity A Book and a Dog Shh I’m Reading Always Home and Uncool A lovely shore breeze… Stacy’s Bookblog Dispatches from across the blogiverse The (polite) battle to preserve manners and considerate behavior, and […]